OREANDA-NEWS. February 04, 2016. The Head of Antitrust practice Sergey Ermolenko spoke on the issue of legal protection of infrastructure facilities and trunk pipeline protected zones at a regular meeting of the Transneft Expert Board.

According to Ermolenko, the inadequacy of the applicable relevant legislation could lead up to abusive practice on the part of the land proprietor. This inadequacy encouraged the Transneft experts to draft a bill on "Trunk Oil and Oil Products Pipelines" in a similar way to the legislation governing the use of gas transportation system, power supply lines and motor roads.

The lawyer dwelt on typical challenges facing a pipeline operator when performing maintenance, repair and redevelopment. These challenges are associated partly with the land plots made available for use for operations period and partly with the indemnification of losses of the land user, including land remediation, the land user’s lost opportunities.

While welcoming the Transneft legislative initiative aimed to eliminate irregularities in the area of the use of land plots located in the pipeline protected zones, the expert stressed the importance of ensuring balance between public good, including pipeline operation safety, and private gain, the land owner’s rights.

He went on to say, "If we take for granted the pipeline operator’s pre-emptive rights to the use of the land occupied by infrastructure facilities, we could well be facing more than one challenge, and alongside with over-complication of operational environment and protection of the pipe we will be having to deal with a challenge which is nonetheless serious violation of ownership rights of the land user and practical exclusion of land from a free turnover, which, we must admit, given current economic environment, is not an adequate solution".

The meetings of the Expert Board of JSC Transneft have served as a public platform for discussion of topical issues of operation and regulation of the fuel and energy complex of Russia since December 2012. They regularly bring together experts from leading advisory firms, government authorities and energy companies leadership.